The What's For Dinner Thread - October'11 (recipe index in OP)

[Goofyluver]

Neh....I tossed it. The smell of it was getting to me after eating it.

DH took a bite, slowly chewed and just stared at me. I was like, "You don't have to eat it."

I hate it when I do that.

 

[Goofyluver]

Tonight's dinner was...

Tomato Basil Parmesan Soup

2 (14 oz) cans diced tomatoes, with juice
1 cup finely diced celery
1 cup finely diced carrots
1 cup finely diced onions
1 tsp dried oregano or 1 T fresh oregano
1 T dried basil or 1/4 cup fresh basil
4 cups chicken broth
½ bay leaf
½ cup flour
1 cup Parmesan cheese
½ cup butter
2 cups half and half, warmed
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp black pepper

1. Add tomatoes, celery, carrots, chicken broth, onions, oregano, basil, and bay leaf to a large slow cooker.
2. Cover and cook on LOW for 5-7 hours, until flavors are blended and vegetables are soft.
3. About 30 minutes before serving prepare a roux. Melt butter over low heat in a skillet and add flour. Stir constantly with a whisk for 5-7 minutes. Slowly stir in 1 cup hot soup. Add another 3 cups and stir until smooth. Add all back into the slow cooker. Stir and add the Parmesan cheese, warmed half and half, salt and pepper. Add additional basil and oregano if needed (the slow cooker does a number on spices and they get bland over time, so don't be afraid to always season to taste at the end).
4. Cover and cook on LOW for another 30 minutes or so until ready to serve.


UncleR started this during the middle of the day and I came home and finished the soup with the roux. I thought this was lovely and delicious. And it was perfect for today since it's been raining and cold.

 

[Soldier's*Sweeties]

Tonight's dinner was...

That looks really good!

 

[Glynis]

I would love to know what chili cheese chips are.

I feel like I should hang my head in shame as I tell you what they are.

Take a handful of Fritos, place on a plate. Open a can of chili and heat it up. Spoon it over the Fritos, and top with shredded cheddar cheese. There you have it!

However, the kids ate it all, and proclaimed me the best mom in the world!

 

[Glynis]

Jen - That recipe looks like the soup recipe I got from my sister years ago. We love it, but I never thought to make it in the crock pot! I'll have to give it a go!

I'm tentatively going to say that I think the sickness has passed! No one has complained of a tummy ache, or a head ache, or any kind of ache since noon. Cross your fingers, ladies! Mommy needs a day without sickness!

 

[Goofyluver]

I feel like I should hang my head in shame as I tell you what they are.

Take a handful of Fritos, place on a plate. Open a can of chili and heat it up. Spoon it over the Fritos, and top with shredded cheddar cheese. There you have it!

However, the kids ate it all, and proclaimed me the best mom in the world!

Ohhhh! Frito Pie! We love it too!

Jen - That recipe looks like the soup recipe I got from my sister years ago. We love it, but I never thought to make it in the crock pot! I'll have to give it a go!

I'm tentatively going to say that I think the sickness has passed! No one has complained of a tummy ache, or a head ache, or any kind of ache since noon. Cross your fingers, ladies! Mommy needs a day without sickness!

Fingers crossed!

 

[LindsayDunn228]

Mornin' all (channeling Uncle R this morning )

*WARNING: VERY LONG STORY AHEAD!!!!*

It's going to be an odd day. Scott and my BIL have their Geek meeting tonight. Once upon a time, Amanda and I would always get together and spend the day/evening, depending on her work schedule. The past couple of months she hasn't called me or anything to make plans for it so I assumed it was a work thing. Since around Thanksgiving, she has majorly backed off from me for reasons I don't know. She used to call/text/Facebook message me all the time about everything, especially advice concerning hair and makeup. Well, that stopped as she started hanging out more with this girl she goes to church with.

Loooooooooong story short, the less I heard from her and the less we did things together, the more I started seeing things on Facebook between these two girls. It gave off the vibe that she couldn't be friends with both of us. Silly, right? So as she backed off from me, I decided not to cause a fuss and just take a hint. (I know I know, don't ASSume anything) She would say all the time she was so busy, didn't have time for anything, missed me, etc., there would be all these "checking in" things on Facebook with this girl, going to XYZ with her, this girl would post she was on her way to their house for dinner, etc. So it was very inconsistent. I can totally understand someone being really busy at work/home and not having time for their friends, but I felt like I was being lied to, you know?

Ok, onto today. She sent me a Facebook message last Friday saying:

Geek night.
Guess what?? I Finally have a day off!! And... It's Tuesday! Want to help me buy a good flat iron? I've never even looked at the things, much less compared them.
I'm off all day Tuesday, and if you aren't doing anything I would LOVE to spend the day with you. I can take Chloe to daycare so we can have some quality girl time.

I miss spending time with you!
~Amanda

Ok, progress, right? Well, the day before she had posted about wanting to buy a flat iron. Well, said girl exclaimed, "Just take me with you!" Ok, problem solved. Again, this was one of those things that at one time she would have just called/texted me directly to help her with. Ok, whatever. Again, respecting the space. So I get this message from her. The catty side of me wanted to reply, "Looks like you have all the help you need already, judging from you status." But no, of course I didn't say that. I really didn't want to get together with her because number one, I was looking forward to having a day of doing whatever all by myself, and two, this was so random. I didn't know what to make of it.

So I ended up telling her I could shop this morning and do lunch, but I had plans for the late afternoon/evening. Plans with myself, but she doesn't have to know that, lol. She said ok and that we'd meet at 9:30 this morning. Last night on Facebook she posted:

Yay! Super excited about my day off tomorrow! Get to go shopping with my Sis, who has been woefully neglected by me since I've been working so much. (And, as predicted, I had to tell 2 postmasters "No!" when they called to ask if I wanted to work tomorrow)

Um, ok

So point of the story, we are getting together today. After much prayer and deliberation (and consulting with a friend who knows us both) I am going to broach the subject of what the heck's been going on. I am pretty good at discerning when it's a good time to get into a deep subject and when it isn't, so we'll see how it goes today.

That being said, Scott is having dinner at his meeting tonight and we are going out to lunch somewhere, no idea where yet. If you think of it, say a prayer or send good thoughts my way this morning. I HATE drama and want it out of my life, so I'm really stressed out right now.

I hope everyone has a great day and thanks for reading this novel. It made me feel a lot better just writing it all out

 

[Goofyluver]

Lindsay, I'll be thinking of you today. And I'll say one more thing...girl, you just can't be replaced.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Good morning. It's Tuesday!

Nothing big at work today. Just another day.

UncleR is making my favorite dinner tonight of chicken piccata.

Y'all have a great one!

 

[Nancyg56]

Good Morning!

Glynis- fingers crossed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hope all are well today!

Aimee- LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I would make soup and toss the rice in. I love rice and Buddy hates it so I have to hide it. I also love Spanish Rice so I wonder if you could somehow turn it into a side dish

Jen- that lemon pie looks amazing! Buddy loves anything lemon.

Lindsay- you have been through this with Amanda before. She seems to be a woman who cannot manage to live without tooting her own horn No advice just a

Last night we had the pot roast with green peas and a tomato and onion salad. It really was delicious! We have that or I will make a chicken soup for dinner tonight. I have the girls this afternoon for their naps so we'll see.

 

[Glynis]

Lindsay - I agree with Nancy. You've been through this with Amanda, over and over. I hope it all goes well with her. Just don't let yourself get hurt!

I'm going to try to stay at home most of the day today! I don't really need to go anywhere. I think Timmy and I will make a diet Coke run this morning, and then we will be home for the duration. I've got laundry to do, not to mention the last of the Christmas stuff to take down. That's got to be number one on my list. This afternoon I have Scouts, so I'll be out of the house then. No need to go to the store if I don't have to, right?

Dinner tonight will be open faced turkey sandwiches with gravy. Yum!!!

 

[liamsaunt]

Okay, so I got a rice cooker for XMas. I have used it twice now to perfect results. However, when I made rice over the weekend I was too busy multitasking to really look at the rice/water ratio chart. I thought I was making 6 cups COOKED rice, but I put in 6 cups DRY rice. So, it made a huge amt of rice I have two huge containers of it in the fridge now so what else do you make with cold leftover rice? Fried rice! I may also talk DH into stopping for some sushi on the way home to go with it.

That is so something I would do! I made a really good Thai pineapple fried rice this weekend. Everyone ate it, even Caili! Let me know if you would like the recipe.

DH took a bite, slowly chewed and just stared at me. I was like, "You don't have to eat it."

We all have dishes like that sometimes. I made a curried chickpea-tofu dish once that was so inedible that my DH STILL talks about it, and I made it over 15 years ago!

I'm tentatively going to say that I think the sickness has passed! No one has complained of a tummy ache, or a head ache, or any kind of ache since noon. Cross your fingers, ladies! Mommy needs a day without sickness!

I am glad to hear that everyone is doing better! I hope you have a relaxing day.

Lindsay, I read your story and I hope you have a nice day with your sister. I think that you really shouldn't read too much into facebook and status updates etc. It is so easy to misinterpret what people mean because it is written rather than spoken, and also most people try to write briefly in their updates so it doesn't always come across right.

WFD: going out for Cambodian.

 

[Aimeedyan]

That is so something I would do! I made a really good Thai pineapple fried rice this weekend. Everyone ate it, even Caili! Let me know if you would like the recipe.

Yes please!


Tonight we'll either have waffles and bacon, or go out. I have a feeling DH will choose to go out as he doesn't like to do dishes

 

[Goofyluver]

Jen- that lemon pie looks amazing! Buddy loves anything lemon.

Last night we had the pot roast with green peas and a tomato and onion salad. It really was delicious! We have that or I will make a chicken soup for dinner tonight. I have the girls this afternoon for their naps so we'll see.

It is amazing.

Today is cold, it's a pot roast kind of day. We'll be right there!

I'm going to try to stay at home most of the day today! I don't really need to go anywhere. I think Timmy and I will make a diet Coke run this morning, and then we will be home for the duration. I've got laundry to do, not to mention the last of the Christmas stuff to take down. That's got to be number one on my list. This afternoon I have Scouts, so I'll be out of the house then. No need to go to the store if I don't have to, right?

Dinner tonight will be open faced turkey sandwiches with gravy. Yum!!!

Glad that everyone is doing better!!!

WFD: going out for Cambodian.

I've never had Cambodian. You'll have to give us an idea of what that is!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi y'all! I'm home.

It is just too cold for work.

Tonight's dinner is chicken piccata. Yummmmm.

Tomorrow is shopping day so I'm looking for a few recipes to make over the next week. Time to go scout Pinterest!

Everyone have a good evening!

 

[franandaj]

Glynis - I hope all the sickness is gone from your house, that's never fun!

Jen - Enjoy your favorite dinner!

Lindsay - I wouldn't read much into the whole FB posts, I hope you two had a nice time and got past whateer was going on.

Becky - I've never had Cambodian either, sounds interesting. We have a somewhat large Cambodian population here in Long Beach.

Nancy - I hope you enjoyed your Chicken Soup

I'm sure I've forgotten someone, but I've had crazy days.

Tonight we did drive through dinner, tomorrow is another long day trying to get the FIL's house ready for rental, we probably have 2-3 more days over there hanging window treatments and 9 more doorknobs/deadbolts, not to mention cleaning of the kitchen and bathroom. Then there is the yard and the patio. Tomorrow (which is really today) will be leftovers from Sunday night and Prime Rib night.

 

[PrincessInOz]

Glynis - Thought of you today. Pixie dust to Jacob and I hope you get it sorted for his and your sake.
Hope all the sickness is gone.

Nancy - I think I missed something. Apologies for this. Why were you off your ankle for two days?

Becky - Great food. I think I said it before but I'm saying it again!

Aimee - Glad to see that you're cooking rice in the rice cooker!

Jen - Loving your food porn.

Alison - Hope you get some down time from cleaning soon.

*************************

It's a COLD day in Melbourne. Supposed to be summer but as I'm sitting here typing, we have the heater turned on again. And guess what? There's SNOW on the mountains 4 hours away. SNOW in freakin' January. This is about 10 days from New Year's Day where it was over 100 F!


Wednesday here. WFD? Mum's cooking!


My garden is being a bit more productive now.

This is what I picked on the 6th Jan.

...and I am trying to keep good with my food. I've decided I need to drop 20 - 25 lbs and have booked back in with WW, starting next Monday.
So, I did a quick stir-fry and threw in some leftover Roast Chicken we had in the fridge for me and DS. DH had the chicken free version.

My dinner from the 6th of Jan...

3 days later, I was cropping these vegetables and also got another 2 zucchinis as well. I'm at the stage where I would so definitely share zucchini if it weren't for that little pond between Australia and the US.

Just checked my garden tonight....and I think I'm cropping more tomorrow again.

 

[PrincessInOz]

Zucchini Boats


I'm growing zucchini in my garden. One of the plants is being particularly productive this year so we're having zucchini almost coming out of our ears at the moment. I've decided to make this dish as a means of getting through some of the vegetable in the fridge.

Normally, you would stuff this with meat but I have a pesky-vegetarian of a DH.....and I didn't feel like stuffing the zucchini with beans or chickpea. I opted instead to stuff it with rice; specifically, with a risotto. Yes I know...it seems like two main meals but it worked for DH and I was pretty happy with the taste. I pretty much threw in what I had in the fridge and cupboard rather than following a recipe.


My starting ingredients:

• Zucchini, 1 per person – sliced in half lengthwise and the fleshy center scooped out
• Carrot, about 1 stick – diced
• Eggplant or aubergine, 1 - diced
• Onion, about ½ - finely diced
• Arborio rice, about ½ cup
• Vegetable stock, about 2 cups – I used stock powder and added hot water for this meal rather than using the commercial vegetable stock in the tetra packs. For this meal, I wanted the rice to be delicately seasoned. I find that the commercial vegetable stock a little overpowering and too salty for what I wanted in the risotto.
• Oil, 1 tablespoon
• Butter, about 1 tablespoon or thereabouts
• Sage (not pictured), about 4 – 6 leaves roughly chopped

I have a tomato pictured and had thought to include it in the risotto. In the end, I found that I didn’t need to add it as I didn’t think that I wanted the taste that you can sometimes get with tomato astringency in the risotto.

I ended up dicing the fleshy center of the zucchini to add to the risotto instead of the tomato.

Gently fry the carrot and onion in the oil for a couple of minutes (low/medium heat).

Add the butter…

…followed by the Arborio rice.

Fry the ingredients for another 1 – 2 minutes. I normally add white wine at this stage; but I didn’t have an opened bottle in the fridge and didn’t feel like having any wine that night.

Instead, I went straight with the stock powder ....

....and a little of the hot water.

Stir the rice and continue to cook until most of the water has been absorbed or cooked off. Add more hot water, a little at a time. Continue cooking in this way until the rice is almost ‘al dente’. On my stove, this took about 15 – 17 minutes.

At this stage, add the ‘softer’ vegetables – the eggplant and the zucchini.

Continue to cook until the rice is ‘al dente’. On my stove, this takes about 20 – 22 minutes. Add the sage and mix in the risotto at this stage,

Remove the risotto from heat and stuff the hollowed out zucchini.

My pesky-vegetarian is off cheese at the moment. So, I didn’t top the rice with cheese as I normally would.
Bake in a hot oven (200 C) for 15 – 20 minutes.

I estimated about ¼ cup of Arborio rice per person as I wanted to have some rice leftover to serve with dinner.

My dinner!

DS? He ended up having Peking Duck for dinner. Most of you might remember that I get this from Costco in Melbourne and all I have to do is put the duck into the oven and debone it afterwards, cut up some cucumber and make up the components of the Peking Duck.

This is what DS had for his dinner….a few of these!

 

[Goofyluver]

Tonight we did drive through dinner, tomorrow is another long day trying to get the FIL's house ready for rental, we probably have 2-3 more days over there hanging window treatments and 9 more doorknobs/deadbolts, not to mention cleaning of the kitchen and bathroom. Then there is the yard and the patio. Tomorrow (which is really today) will be leftovers from Sunday night and Prime Rib night.

I hope you get the house done soon!

This is what DS had for his dinner….a few of these!

Oh yummmmmm. Great pics...AGAIN!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Good Wednesday mornin' y'all!

The cat woke me up at 4:30. She likes to open and close the bedroom door.

I have to shop today so it's easy dinner tonight...pigs in a blanket and mac and cheese. Not my fav, but quick and easy!

Y'all have a great Wednesday!

 

[dgbg100106]

 

[liamsaunt]

I've never had Cambodian. You'll have to give us an idea of what that is! !

Umm....it's kind of hard to describe. It reminds me a little bit of Thai food? Sweet and spicy curries. There is a French influence to the food also. Last night I had a red curry shrimp dish with leeks, scallions, mushroom, tomato, and sticky rice. John had a rare seared tuna with red and green curry sauces and pear-stuffed crisped ravioli.

Hello! How are you feeling?

Here is the Pineapple Rice Recipe for Aimee. I adapted it from a recipe I found on about.com

Pineapple Fried Rice

• 4 tbsp. neutral oil
• 1 small can pineapple chunks, drained, OR 1+1/2 cups fresh pineapple chunks
• 4 cups cold cooked rice
• 2 shallots, finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 red or green chili, thinly sliced, OR 1/4 to 3/4 tsp. dried crushed chili (chili flakes)
• 2 eggs
• ½ cup frozen peas
• 1 small carrot, grated
• ¼ cup currants OR raisins
• ½ cup roasted unsalted whole cashews
• 3 scallions, finely sliced
• 1/3 cup chopped cilantro
• 2 Tbsp. soy sauce
• 1 tbsp. fish sauce
• 2 tsp. curry powder
• 1/2 tsp. sugar

• Mix 1 Tbsp. oil with the rice, using your fingers to separate any chunks into grains. Set aside.
• Stir the soy sauce/fish sauce together with the curry powder. Set aside
• Drizzle 1-2 Tbsp. oil in a wok/large frying pan over medium-high heat. Add shallots, garlic, and chili, stir-frying until fragrant (1 minute).
• Crack egg into wok and stir quickly to cook (like making scrambled eggs).
• Add the carrot. Stir-fry 1-2 minutes
• Add the rice, pineapple chunks, peas, currants and cashews. Drizzle the fish/soy sauce mixed with curry powder over and gently stir-fry to combine over medium-high to high heat until the rice "dances" (makes popping sounds) - about 5 to 8 minutes.
• Top with spring onions and cilantro.

 

[Glynis]

Morning. Things here are quite good, this morning. All the kids are healthy, and happy. Can't ask for more!

Lindsay - how did things go with Amanda, yesterday?

Becky - That pineapple rice recipe looks really good! Definitely going to try that one sometime.

Jen - Sorry about the naughty cat!

Tonight is our crazy night. Jacob has Scouts, Katie has her church group, and I'm not really sure what Alan's school schedule is. Can't reach him on the phone, right now to find out, either. So, I've decided we're going to have breakfast for dinner. Pancakes and scrambled eggs. I like to add a can of creamed corn to the eggs for some taste and texture. Then, I pile on lots of sharp cheddar cheese. Yummy!!!

I got a bunch of green bananas from our bountiful basket order on Saturday, and I'm hoping they ripen soon! I found a recipe on pinterest that I want to try... Banana sticky toffee pudding. Yum!!! Cross your fingers that they ripen before my desire to bake burns off!